


Always Open Halfway Through

by atsammy



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character's Name Spelled as Viktor, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of other skaters, Minor Character Death, Post-Grand Prix Final, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-29 05:14:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14465811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atsammy/pseuds/atsammy
Summary: Baffled, Viktor watched as the other man closed his eyes briefly, dropped his head, and then turned and walked away from him without a word.  That had never happened to him before; fans always wanted a photo, a hug, or once—a lock of hair shorn off with scissors.  Okay, that had only happened when he was sixteen, but still.  He'd never smiled at someone only for them to turn and walk away.





	Always Open Halfway Through

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to thank [Chrome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrome/pseuds/Chrome) for her phenomenal beta! She took my writing and helped me beat it into shape, and this story is all the better for it.

_They’re both convinced_  
_that a sudden passion joined them._  
_Such certainty is beautiful,_  
_but uncertainty is more beautiful still_

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

 

Baffled, Viktor watched as the other man closed his eyes briefly, dropped his head, and then turned and walked away from him without a word.  That had never happened to him before; fans always wanted a photo, a hug, or once—a lock of hair shorn off with scissors. Okay, that had only happened when he was sixteen, but still.  He'd never smiled at someone only for them to turn and walk away.

Beside him, Yuri was muttering under his breath about a "fucking coward," loud enough for Yakov in front of them to make out the words.  

"Let's go!" growled their coach, and the junior and senior men's Grand Prix champions turned as one.  

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

 

Later that night after dinner with Yakov, Yuri, and Mila to celebrate the three gold medals won that day, Viktor went back up to his small hotel room.  It was late, close to midnight, but the dinner had given him new energy. He collapsed onto the bed hoping that it would trick his brain into slowing down and convince his muscles to save that new energy for the exhibition.  After ten minutes of lying there, his eyes closed, he knew it was useless.

With a sigh, he stood up again and went into the small bathroom to wash his face.  He was so tired. He’d skated well the last two days, but even the gold medal did little for him.  It felt like the more he skated, the further away he ended up from the last time he truly enjoyed it.  Well, enjoyed the performance of it. There was no challenge anymore. He didn’t break his own world record this time around, and he didn’t care.  Not like he used to. Not like Yuri thought he should.

Bouncing lightly on his feet, he made up his mind and turned away, grabbing his skate bag from the closet and shrugging his coat back on.  He hadn’t bothered to change out of his tracksuit for dinner, so it was just a matter of jamming on his shoes and making sure he had his key and his phone, and he was headed for the elevator.  Yakov had made sure that all his skaters had access to the rink at all hours during the Final—a perk of coaching the national team—though they were not supposed to go alone. Viktor ignored that rule, as he usually did.

The walk back to the rink only took five minutes.  It was dark, just a few lights on inside, and he didn’t bother to turn on anymore as he went into the locker room to put on his skates.  That done, he shrugged off his coat and left bag, coat, and shoes just inside the curtains leading to the ice. He pushed past the heavy blue curtains, his thoughts already turning to what he wanted to do next, when his mind caught up with his feet, and he froze, staring transfixed out across the ice.

There was already somebody on the ice.  It was almost 1 am; he had no idea who else could possibly be at the rink at this time, who else could have been given access or left behind that night.  With the competition nearly over, and the only thing left the exhibition gala, there was no _reason_ for anyone—even him, if he was honest—to be there.  

He almost turned away, disappointment clouding his mood at the loss of the solitude he craved on the ice.  He had no desire to be around anyone. But there was something, something about the way the other skater was moving, that caught his eye and held him.  Whether it was the quick turn of the head or the movement of the hand, he didn't know, but something grabbed his attention and would not let go. Instead of leaving, he found that he'd taken three more steps into the arena, still in the shadows and unable to tear his eyes away.

He didn't recognize the skater, not immediately, though he could see that he was, in fact, a he.  He was in practice clothes—plain, black pants and a teal blue t-shirt that hid as much as it revealed—and on the far side of the rink, but he was skating...  he was skating a routine, Viktor realized, startled. It was a routine that he could almost hear in his head even though there was no music playing. But he could hear it in the way the other skater moved.  The way his feet shifted so smoothly and quickly on the ice it seemed like he was flying. He transitioned into a jump, and the moment he took off from the ice, Viktor realized who he was looking at.

Katsuki Yuuri.

The Japanese national champion who had come into the Grand Prix final ranked third in the world, and left it sixth after two...  well, “very bad skates” was putting it _mildly_.

Viktor recognized the routine that Yuuri had skated two days before, the one he had skated all year.  A routine Viktor had watched after each competition leading up to the final, just as he watched everyone else's, to see who he might be up against and what he would need to do to win.  He knew this routine, even without the music. But where each of those performances, barring the one two days ago, had been good—good enough to take silver and bronze—they'd never been skated like _this_.

As he watched the last minute of Yuuri's short program, skated on ice half in darkness, it was perfect.  There was absolutely no error. The quad loop that he'd fallen on in competition—

He landed cleanly.  

The quad toe-double toe combination that had been singles both?

Perfect.  And with a triple instead of the double he’d done all season.

And suddenly Viktor realized what it was that had brought this skater who had fallen so many times and barely gotten up again—what it was that made him always be just on the brink of greatness.  He had _talent_ , skill that Viktor had never seen from him, no one had ever seen it, not just in skating but in the emotion his skating reflected.  Had his coach? Why didn't he do this in competition? What happened?

Yuuri finished his final spin, a spin so fast that Viktor didn't think that he could match.  No, he _knew_ he couldn't spin that fast.  He finished with his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes closed, and it occurred to Viktor that his eyes had been closed almost the entire performance.  He started to step forward, feeling awkward staring from the shadows, but then Yuuri turned again.

He raised his arms and bent his knee, and with barely a minute’s rest he began his free program.  The same free program Viktor'd watched eight hours earlier with pity in his heart, that he'd stopped watching after a minute because he knew how it would end.  Again, he found himself transfixed as he heard the music even though there was none. He could hear it in the movement of his arms, and the length and extension of his leg, and the height... the _height_ that he got from his jumps.  The height, and the distance. And every jump that he'd missed or stepped out of or underrotated in the last two days, he landed.  Three of them with one more rotation that he’d done in any competition that year.

In his mind, in that part of Viktor's competitive nature that was always calculating points and tracking how his competitors were doing, he realized that if Yuuri had skated this exact program cleanly earlier, he would have won the free skate, if not the gold.  Even with all his quads, Viktor had only one in the second half of his free skate while all Yuuri's were, including a combination. The last two that Yuuri landed were not just second-half, but at the _end_ , the last thirty seconds, where no one put quads unless they desperately needed the points!  

The artistry of those spins and the skill of the footwork, though.  Viktor could admit to himself if no one else that his step sequences were good, but they were not where he got his points.  He'd made a few errors that day, although he didn’t fall, and he'd won gold by twenty points. But even without the additional quads, Yuuri would most likely have beaten him by a point and a half, not much, granted—Viktor hadn't broken his world record that day, after all—and his presentation scores might have been even higher.  Viktor would have needed a fifth quad to guarantee a win against this artistry, and it would have been a fight.

And he landed this!  He did this program a minute after what Viktor assumed was his entire short program, and how many times had he skated this tonight, before Viktor had come in?  He'd already skated the full free program once in the last eight hours, and Viktor remembered how tired, how completely exhausted he'd looked in the kiss-and-cry.

... how could he do this?  

By now, Viktor had stepped closer, though he was still mostly in shadow, and he thought he could see what Yuuri was skating.  The music Viktor vaguely remembered was upbeat, a quick-timed challenging piece that felt happy, or at least vibrant. But Yuuri wasn't skating happiness, he was skating... panic?  He was skating panic, and it fit in a way that what little Viktor had watched earlier had not. It fit, like this is what he should have been skating all along; even if he'd been skating more positive emotions in the other competitions, this seemed to fit tonight.  

At the end, Yuuri was on one knee, a hand on the ice, and he stayed there for a moment, his head bowed, just breathing.  He was breathing hard, but he didn't move, he didn't look up—he definitely didn't see Viktor.

And now, Viktor knew he really needed to either leave or let Yuuri know that he was being watched.  But just as Viktor made his decision, Yuuri stood. He stood, and he did something that Viktor absolutely did not expect.  

He turned and skated the few meters back to center ice.  He faced almost exactly the end of the rink where Viktor was still hiding in the shadows.  He put his arm out, and the other one he bent forward, and Viktor knew...

He knew that pose?  But he couldn't, he absolutely could not believe it, and then Yuuri started skating again.  And Viktor knew what he was watching; before Yuuri finished the bracket, skating backwards, preparing for the butterfly, Viktor knew what Yuuri was doing.

It was his own short program.  The short program that had put him in first place going into yesterday, that had won him gold at Skate America and the Cup of China.  

There was no way...  it was absolutely impossible that Katsuki Yuuri could skate this!  And it had nothing to do with his ability, it was—Viktor's short program was the most difficult short program Viktor had ever put together, and each performance of it he'd added difficulty to it just to do something explosive for his last competitions.   It had four of Viktor's quads, four of them! Two of which Yuuri had never landed in competition, Viktor knew that! He'd never even tried one of them, the flip. He'd only ever landed the loop and the toe loop, and they were not consistent.

But he'd landed them that night; Victor had just watched him do it.  There was no _way_ , though, there couldn't be, after running full speed through his own short and free programs that, not to mention earlier, there was no way that he could—

But he did.

Even as the thought that he could not possibly be watching this went through his mind, Yuuri did it.  Quad toe, triple toe. Perfect. The quad toe combination that Yuuri had never landed—that he'd never _tried_ landing in competition with a quad, but there it was.  Like he'd been landing it all his life.

He couldn't do the next one, though, surely.  Not the quad flip... The quad flip was Viktor's.  No one else in the world could land the quad flip.  He clenched his hands. Not out of anger—out of fear.  As far as Yuuri knew, he was the only person in the arena.  If he did Viktor's routine and fell, there would be no one there.  Was this suicide? Was he trying to just end everything by wearing himself out and jumping quads, falling and hitting his head...

But he did it.  

Viktor's breath caught in his throat.  He'd _landed it!_  He landed it and followed it with the triple toe that Viktor had put in only two mornings before, just for the Grand Prix.  

And now, knowing what he did about his own program, Viktor could see what Yuuri was skating.  He was skating rage. He was skating fear. But there was something else, there was _something_ else that he was skating, what was it?  

This time, when Yuuri finished the routine, Viktor didn't move.  Something told him that Yuuri was not _done_ yet _._ Viktor needed to stay in the shadows, or he would never be done, he would never skate what needed to be skated.   

Yuuri took a little longer this time, not much, maybe an extra thirty seconds, and Viktor could see more clearly now the exhaustion on Yuuri's face.  But he settled himself into Viktor’s starting free skate pose, took one long breath, and began to skate.

Going into the first jump, the quad loop, Viktor held his breath, but there was no hesitation.  It was clean, as clean and perfect as every other jump Viktor had watched him do tonight. There was no sign of the exhaustion so clear on his face, and Viktor found himself seeing other things besides the jumps, though his breath caught with each one, just in case... just in case.

There was something new, in his free program.  Something new, not just from the fear and the panic and the rage he'd witnessed in the last fifteen minutes.  This was an interpretation Viktor would never have thought of.

Viktor had skated this asking someone - anyone - to stay near him when he announced retirement after worlds, even though no one yet knew of his plans.  But Yuuri... he wasn't asking. He was begging. He was begging not to be left alone. He wasn't skating "stay close to me," he was skating "don't leave me behind."  This was a loneliness born of grief.

And this, Viktor realized—  

This was what this piece of music had been written for.  This was not romance, it was grief. That is what had felt so _wrong_ to him all season, no matter what changes he made to his choreography.

This revelation sat heavy in his belly as he watched the rest of the program, the shock of the completed jumps wearing away with each one he did.  It was no longer a surprise to see the quad sal, though the quad flip startled him even while he knew it was coming.

The end, when it came, was final.  Yuuri came out of the spin, did a step change, turned, and held the final pose—for all of two seconds, before he crumpled to the ground.

The collapse was so sudden that at first Viktor could not comprehend what had happened.  Yuuri was standing, and then he was on his knees, hunched over like he had just been shot.  From where Viktor stood more than forty meters away, he could hear a scream.

He was at the rink entrance, his skate guards in his hand, before he knew it.  He set them on the boards beside a pair of glasses and Yuuri’s own guards and pushed off onto the ice.  He grabbed the glasses on instinct as he skated away, all his focus on Yuuri.

Was there blood?  He couldn’t see anything on the ice, and the few lights on overhead were casting weird shadows.  Was something broken? Nothing looked out of place on his legs, his arms, his back.

He was at full speed as he closed on Yuuri and at the last moment, he curved around, slowing in the turn and trying not to spray the other man with ice.  He ended in front of him and without a thought he dropped to his knees inches away.

There was still no blood, and Viktor, his heart racing, was about to grab hold of him and ask if he was okay—he could feel the words in the back of his throat, the panic in him would make them loud, he could tell—when he heard it.

Yuuri was crying.  Sobbing, his head in his hands and thick, heavy breaths interspersed with cries of agony.

What should he do? Victor was… well, he wasn’t good with people, especially not crying people.

Tentatively, he reached out and wrapped his arms around Yuuri’s shoulders. Yuuri initially gave no sign that he even noticed that Viktor was there, but then the weight of Viktor’s arms brought him forward until his bowed head rested just below Viktor’s collarbone.  A moment later, Yuuri’s hands came up to clutch at Viktor’s shirt, gripping it so tightly that he would not have been surprised if he found it ripped later. Viktor adjusted his arms to pull Yuuri closer until he was curled around him, his cheek resting against Yuuri’s hair.  It was awkward and his back ached with the position, but in that moment nothing could have enticed him to move.

He could make out words periodically, among Yuuri’s crying.  He didn’t understand Japanese, not really, but he recognized “gomenasai,” and there was one word that seemed important because Yuuri repeated it the most with some of the loudest sobs, something that sounded like “Veechun.”  He knew “gomenasai” from the travel advice he’d been given the first time he went to NHK, advice that had told him he needed to be prepared to apologize for everything, but about the other one he had no idea.

Eventually, Yuuri’s crying slowed, though his grip on Viktor did not relax.  Viktor wondered when the last time someone had actually hugged Yuuri in more than consolation, and thought that it had been a long time.  He knew that Yuuri didn’t live in Japan anymore. Where he was now, he couldn’t remember, but he knew it was far from his family. The thought of it had him tightening his arms, and he gently, carefully, rubbed his thumb against Yuuri’s neck.

For long minutes after Yuuri stopped shaking, after his breathing started to slow, he stayed where he rested against Viktor.  But eventually he moved back, his head still bowed. “Arigato gozaimasu,” he whispered. “Gomenasai.”

Viktor recognized the offer of gratitude and, letting his hands run over Yuuri’s shoulders as he pulled away, replied with a quiet “You’re welcome” in English.

It was like he was holding a stone, so still did Yuuri become at the sound of his voice.  When he finally lifted his head, and it felt like hours before he did so, his eyes were opened so wide that Viktor thought they might fall out if he opened them any wider.

“Doshite?” Yuuri breathed, then he rubbed at his eyes.

“Vi…  Vikutaru?”

When he heard his name said this way, he realized that he’d heard it at least once while Yuuri had been in his arms.  That Yuuri had been crying over him was something that… he would need to think about later. Now was not the time, now was for Yuuri.  

“Hi,” he said softly, taking Yuuri’s hands in his own.  “Are you hurt?”

Yuuri shook his head slightly and squinted at him.  Viktor remembered that he’d grabbed Yuuri’s glasses, and looked around.  There, on the ice, was a pair of plain blue-rimmed glasses—he must have dropped them as he’d gone to his knees.  Wincing, he let go of Yuuri’s hands to pick them up and hold them out to him like an offering.

When he put them on, Viktor felt his own heart stutter.  Yuuri was the man who had walked away from him. _How had he not recognized him?_  How had he recognized his skating from nearly fifty meters away, but not the man himself from two meters?

As these thoughts ran through his head, Yuuri looked down again at his hands.

Viktor reached out and gently took hold of them again, pressing his thumbs into the back of his hands in what he hoped was a comforting gesture.  He really was so bad at this.

“Do you… want to talk about it?”

There was a pause, and then Yuuri seemed to sag slightly.  “No,” he whispered.

“Want to go back to the hotel?”

There was a longer pause, and then Yuuri nodded.  “Yeah. I should. Ciao Ciao will be worried.”

Viktor didn’t quite understand that, but then again, his English was mainly self-taught, and Yuuri seemed much more comfortable with it.  He stood up carefully, and keeping hold of Yuuri’s hands, helped him to his feet.

They skated together back to the rink entrance, Viktor’s left hand holding carefully onto Yuuri’s right.  Viktor put on his skate guards before handing Yuuri his, presenting them as one would present a sword in homage to a king.

It was another fifteen minutes or so before they were ready to leave—Viktor only had to change back into shoes and put on his coat, but Yuuri disappeared into the locker room, returning with a scrubbed face and hands, all bundled up for the cold.  Viktor took his hand again as they left the dark, empty building, and walked along the road back to the hotel. This late—it was nearly two in the morning now—only a few lamps were lit along the main road and not a single car passed them on the way.

At the hotel, Viktor walked with him to the elevators and did nothing when Yuuri pressed the button for the fifth floor and looked at him, a faint question in his eyes.  They were silent as they walked out of the elevator and down the hall to Yuuri’s room, and Yuuri finally had to let go of his hand to get his room key from deep in his coat pocket.  Viktor followed him in.

He had no plan to stay, but he didn’t want to leave until he was certain that Yuuri would be all right.  He sat on the end of the bed as Yuuri set his skate bag down inside the closet and took off his shoes. Yuuri glanced at him and then away and disappeared into the bathroom and shut the door.   He pulled out his phone and unlocked it. He had a missed call from Yakov and several messages from Christophe, Yuri, and Emil, but he ignored those. He shoved his phone back into his pocket as the bathroom door opened again and Yuuri hesitated in the doorway.

Viktor patted the bed beside him, and after another long moment, Yuuri sat down next to him, close enough that their legs lightly touched.

“Thank you,” Yuuri said softly.

Viktor smiled, mostly to himself because Yuuri was looking at the wall opposite them.

“You are very welcome.”

Yuuri’s hands couldn’t seem to stay still; he was wringing them and clasping them together and then letting go.  Viktor finally reached over and took one of them in his own again, lacing their fingers together as Yuuri drew in a quick breath.

“What happened?” he asked, unsure if he should.  He wasn’t asking about the competition, though he didn’t know how to explain that to Yuuri so he didn’t try.

Yuuri looked down at their joined hands, his fingers twitching in Viktor’s grasp, but he didn’t pull away.

“It was… a bad day,” Yuuri finally said quietly.  “Mari… my sister, was supposed to be here, but our dog…  She called before the free skate to tell me that… he died.”

Oh.  Oh, Yuuri…  Viktor thought briefly of Makkachin and could imagine how that must have felt.  He turned, keeping hold of Yuuri’s hand, to wrap his other arm around him in an awkward hug.  “I’m so sorry, Yuuri,” he said, as gently as he could. That explained the grief he had been skating all night.

“He died,” Yuuri continued, and this felt like something that he’d been saying to himself all night.  “I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there for five years, and he died, and I didn’t even…”

He started crying again, but not like he had on the rink.  Quietly, his body shaking, and as Viktor clung to him he could feel wetness against his own neck, his own unexpected tears mixing with Yuuri’s where he leaned against Viktor’s shoulder.

Viktor lost track of time while they sat there.  His thoughts only returned to the present when he heard the buzz of a phone vibrating on wood.  He looked around, and saw a cell phone on the nightstand, its lighted screen turning dark again.  He looked down and realized to his surprise that Yuuri was asleep against him, his weight warm against Viktor’s side.

Carefully, oh so carefully, he stood, drawing the sleeping man up with him.  Were it any other night he would never do this, but he didn’t want to wake Yuuri, so he said a quick prayer in Russian and reached down to wrap his arm behind and under Yuuri’s legs.  He didn’t drop him, so the prayer must have worked. He carried him the few steps around to the side of the bed and laid him down on top of the blankets. He took off Yuuri’s glasses and set them beside his phone, and then tugged the blankets from the other side of the bed over so that Yuuri was covered and warm.

He looked in the drawer of the nightstand and pulled out the pad of hotel paper and pen tucked away there.  Unsure what to write for a moment, he watched Yuuri sleep, his face red and drawn, and so beautiful.

He wrote his phone number and a quick note:

 _If you want to talk, anytime, anywhere_. _~ V_

He carefully tore off that piece of paper and folded it in half before placing it under Yuuri’s glasses.  As he did so, Yuuri’s phone vibrated again, and Viktor was able to read

2:48am   **From Coach Celestino:** Yuuri, please call me when you see this message.  No one can find you, and we are worried about…

before the screen went dark again.  Viktor glanced at Yuuri as he touched the home button on the iPhone and saw that there were seventeen missed calls and over forty text messages from his coach and others.

He set the phone back down on the nightstand.  He would not wake Yuuri from his exhausted, grief-stricken sleep.  With one last look at him, he walked away, turning off the light in the bedroom as he walked down the small hallway to the hotel room door.  Picking up his own skate bag from where he’d left it, he opened the door and quietly shut it behind him. As he walked down the hall back toward the elevator, he pulled out his phone and listened to the voicemail Yakov had left him just after midnight.  He was not surprised, after seeing the message on Yuuri’s phone, that Yakov was only calling to see if he had seen Yuuri since they had all returned to the hotel. He was asking as a courtesy to a fellow coach, and he didn’t expect anything, but to let him know if he had.

Opening his text messages, he realized that the other messages, even the one from Yuri, were also asking if he’d seen Yuuri, though in various levels of politeness.  “Heh,” he murmured, reading the junior skater’s text, “I didn’t realize Yura cared so much.”

Switching to Yakov’s number, he texted back.  It was too late to call anyway.

2:52am **To Yakov:**  Can you let Yuuri’s coach know that he is in his room?  I found him at the rink and brought him back here; his phone was still in his room and he fell asleep before he saw any messages.  He’s still asleep now, but he wasn’t doing well when I found him.

A few minutes later, after he’d reached his own room and gone through his own nightly rituals, Viktor’s phone chimed at him.  There was a single message.

      2:58am **From UNKNOWN:**  Thank you

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

 

Viktor debated with himself all morning, about whether he would go through with it.  All through breakfast with the other Russian skaters and Yakov, and the gala practice, where all the junior and senior skaters rehearsed the intro and final group skates.  Yuuri was there, and it seemed like every time Viktor caught his eye he would blush and look away, but sometimes there would be the hint of a smile in his eyes as he did so.  He was there, he skated, he interacted with the other skaters, most of whom seemed to lose the careful way they had been looking at him since the men’s final. Viktor was content with that.

A few hours later, Yuuri joined them on the ice to introduce the gala.  Because he was not one of the medal winners, he would not skate during the exhibition, but he was there, he laughed.  Viktor could still tell how he’d spent the night—he looked worn out, heavy—but he didn’t seem quite as broken anymore, either.  Not like he had when they’d come off the ice.

Near the end of the gala, after more than an hour of watching skaters come and go, Viktor was walking around the warm-up area shaking out his arms.  His was the last individual exhibition before the final group skate. The non-medal winners were relaxing, stretching, and watching the performances on the tv’s around the room.    As he wandered, he caught Yuuri’s eye again, and this time Yuuri smiled at him, just once. When it was time for Viktor to head out to take the ice once Mila was done, Yuuri and the others were already beginning to line up to follow him out.

If he’s there, Viktor thought to himself, if he’s by the entrance to the rink when I make the turn, I’ll do it.

He kept telling himself this as he handed his skate guards to an attendant, but he didn’t know what he expected.  But he hoped. And so, he got to the other end of the rink, and he made the turn and he looked back. He saw him. The others were beginning to crowd into the entryway, and he was there, close to the front of the group.  That settled it.

Instead of turning as he normally did to take the center ice, Viktor continued around until he was back at the rink entrance.  He could hear around him the audience starting to shift as he stepped off the ice. Off to the side, where the coaches were sitting, he thought he heard his name.  He didn’t go any further, and he called out Yuuri’s name.

Because the juniors were there as well, Yuri looked up at him, but Viktor ignored him.  Yuuri looked at him as well, confused, and even more so when Viktor gestured him over.

Yuuri looked at him for a long moment, his eyes wide without his glasses and a distinct pink tinge to his cheeks.  He was finally shoved forward by a carefully placed hand on his back, courtesy of Christophe, or maybe Mila, or both; they both stood behind Yuuri with interested grins on their faces.

Viktor waited as Yuuri caught his balance, and then, with one last long look at Viktor’s hand reaching out to him, Yuuri leaned down and took off his skate guards, handing them to one of the rink attendants nearby.  He heard Yakov yell his name, and also someone else saying Yuuri’s name, but he ignored them all, and the rising noise all around him, as he took Yuuri’s wrist in his hand and led him out onto the ice.

They skated around, letting Yuuri re-warm his legs, and Viktor could feel Yuuri’s eyes on him the entire time.  They circled around to the center of the ice, and Viktor nudged Yuuri over until he was where Viktor normally stood to begin this performance.  An entire conversation happened in the way that Yuuri stared at him, before rolling his eyes just slightly and moving back one more inch.

“Viktor,” Yuuri said, his voice barely audible above the din around them.  Viktor shivered slightly at the accented loveliness of the way Yuuri said his name.  “What are you doing?”

“You know my exhibition skate,” Viktor replied, a statement rather than a question.  Yuuri’s eyes widened slightly, and then, his cheeks reddening again, he nodded.

“Skate with me.  Show them all who you really are.”

He stepped away, only a few steps, and got into the starting position of his exhibition skate.  He kept his eyes on Yuuri’s in challenge, and Yuuri closed his eyes briefly before nodding. Shifting his feet and turning, he raised his arms in a replica of Viktor.

The music started.

Later, Viktor would read some of the Tweets and Instagram posts and articles written by people in the audience.  There would be people who thought he was cruel to pull Yuuri out and taunt him into skating with him. No one in the audience seemed to think that Yuuri could do it, an opinion more than one would later apologize for in longer write-ups of the event.  In those posts, he could tell the moment that they did his first jump, his quad flip. A jump that he did with Yuuri just meters away, perfectly in sync from take-off to landing, and Viktor thought that he had never felt so happy skating as he did in that moment when their skates touched the ice together after four glorious rotations in the air.

The stunned audience burst into applause.

It all changed when they did that first jump, when Yuuri landed it cleanly, in sync, not a single moment of hesitation.  It was fun! It really was—Viktor had not had this much fun skating, even in an exhibition, in years. He didn’t do pairs, and so skating in those gala performances with large groups of people was really the only time he ever just skated with anyone outside of practice.  Between his own focus in practice and how Yakov ran things, he really didn’t skate much with others outside of warm-ups and cooldowns. So, this was fun.

Yes, he had to pay more attention to where he was on the ice, offset as he was from his normal positions, to make sure he didn’t do something foolish like slam into a wall.  That would be embarrassing. But for those four and a half minutes, it was just him and Yuuri and the music and the ice and the almost non-stop applause and cheers of support.  At one point, when they were near the entrance to the rink during his step sequence, he saw that every skater from the Grand Prix, all of them, were crowded there taking pictures, some were crying, and he didn’t even dare to look at the coaches.

It was fantastic.  It was the best time he could have imagined, and Viktor thought that if he left now, after this night, he would be happy.  They did the last jump of his exhibition, triple axel-double toe loop, and then went into the final spin sequence.

Well, Yuuri did.  Victor did one spin and then, preparing for the moment of vertigo, stepped out of it and came to a stop while Yuuri continued on.  He grinned hugely, and began applauding, as Yuuri transitioned through the final two spins and came to a stop. He saw the moment that Yuuri realized that Viktor had long since stopped and was just watching him, clapping along with the audience.  He blushed bright red, and for a moment Viktor wondered if he would burst into tears. But he didn’t, he just lowered his arms and grinned helplessly, first at Viktor, then up into the stands. And Viktor thought— _this was worth it_.

Yuuri waited, expecting Viktor to take the first bow, but Viktor shook his head and gestured at him.  Yuuri, his face still red, bowed and then pointed to him. Viktor bowed as well, and the arena, already deafening, seemed to grow even louder, an explosion of sound.  He skated over and hugged him tightly.

“You were _fantastic_ ,” he said, dropping his head to try to counter the roar around them.  Yuuri just hid his face in Viktor’s shoulder for one moment, something that could be explained away by the difference in their heights.

Viktor thought he heard Yuuri say “you are such an idiot,” but the words were hard to make out, not just because of the noise, but because Yuuri seemed to be laughing.  The “I can’t believe you made me do this” that followed was clearer. When Yuuri looked up at him again, there was a smile on his face.

“Come on,” Viktor answered, “let’s finish our bows and get this show over with.”

The rest of the gala skate, all ten minutes of it, was chaos, as Viktor knew it would be.  They sort of, en masse, did the choreography they’d rehearsed earlier but there were too many people who just didn’t care.  Chris came over three times to hug Yuuri, and even Yuri came over and rammed his shoulder into Yuuri’s arm. So many people came over to ask where the hell he’d learned the quad flip, and if he was ok after Yuri’s display of affection.  They got through the routine, sort of, but Viktor would never remember those last minutes on the ice that night. What he remembered after their skate was the smile on Yuuri’s face, the pleased embarrassment.

Oh, he’d hear about it later, and he did.  But after Yakov finished yelling at him for “corrupting other skaters with his impulsivity” and “endangering the life of his fellow competitors,” he also grabbed Viktor in a tight hug unlike any he’d had from his coach in years and said, “I’m so proud of you.”  And that was something that Viktor had not heard in a very long time. He had won so often, been undefeated for so long, that pride from others in his accomplishments seemed an afterthought.

He didn’t know what he would do next.  He still had not told his coach that he planned to retire after the Grand Prix, that he would no longer be competing once nationals and worlds were over the next months.  He knew that that would start another argument. But for tonight, the exhibition behind them… He didn’t know what he would do after this. There were a lot of conversations that he would need to have with a lot of people.  But he felt, he really did, that this was the best way to end his career as a skater. To pass on the torch to a new skater who was better than anyone knew, even himself.

What would happen after this was unknown.  But Viktor had a feeling that Yuuri would be there.  So, as they took that final lap before the end of the music, he came up beside Yuuri, and wrapped an arm around his shoulder.  He told him, “I’m proud of you.”

The look on Yuuri’s face settled it.  This was the end, for Viktor. But it was also a beginning.

 

 _Every beginning_  
_is only a sequel, after all,_  
_and the book of events_  
_is always open halfway through_

- Wisława Szymborska, "Love at First Sight" 

**Author's Note:**

> I found the YOI fandom in January 2018, and while I had watched and thoroughly enjoyed the series when it first came out, I had not ventured to the fandom and the absolutely amazing fan fiction that this fandom has produced until I was looking for distractions from my PhD work at the beginning of the year and re-watched the series. This time around, it affected me much more than it had the first time around, partly because I have been struggling for the last year with working through my own grief and a depression that set in after I lost both of my cats within weeks of each other last September. While this story was not born of that grief (two of the funnier lines are actually what spawned the idea), I found this writing this to be incredibly cathartic. 
> 
> I hope that you, the reader, enjoyed this, and thank you for reading!


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